Though many of today’s domestic and international crises date back to George W. Bush’s presidency, Republicans see a political edge in frustrating President Obama’s efforts to solve them, reveling in a new narrative about Obama’s “weakness.” The Guantanamo mess is…
Category: Politics
Blindness to Blowback
After a terrorist attack, if anyone dares suggest that the killings represent blowback from U.S. military violence abroad, that person can expect furious denunciations even though the point is almost surely true, a paradox that William Blum confronts in this…
Gun Madness v. Gun Sanity
As the gun carnage continues across the United States, the Right won’t stop peddling its bogus historical claims about the Second Amendment and rallying its gullible supporters to fight even modest safety laws. But victims of gun violence are finally…
Obama’s Sub-Prime Conflict
From the Archive: President Obama has nominated Hyatt Hotels heiress Penny Pritzker to be the next Commerce Secretary. Pritzker, also a major fundraiser for Obama’s two presidential campaigns, faced controversy because of her role in the sub-prime mortgage disaster, as Dennis…
An Excuse for Syrian ‘Regime Change’?
Across Official Washington including the neocon Washington Post and “liberal” MSNBC pundits are demanding U.S. intervention in the Syrian civil war. But the furor over alleged use of chemical weapons represents just the latest dubious argument for regime change, says ex-CIA analyst…
Pursuing Truth about Israel/Palestine
Many journalists are confronted with a choice in their careers: pursue a difficult truth by taking on powerful interests or protect their livelihoods by going with the flow. While readers may think the choice is obvious pursue the truth it…
Sandra Day O’Connor’s ‘Maybe’ Regret
Exclusive: Ex-Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who normally ducks questions about overturning Al Gore’s election in 2000 and putting George W. Bush in the White House, admits that “maybe” a mistake was made. But she still won’t accept the magnitude of…
The Special-Interest Congress
Special interests with lots of money continue to be heard in Congress; the average citizen not so much. Thus, corporate tax breaks are protected while programs to help people and build the country are cut, as Bill Moyers and Michael…
It’s the Media, Stupid!
Exclusive: Rich right-wingers, including the Koch Brothers and Rupert Murdoch, are eying the purchase of the Los Angeles Times and other major regional newspapers to create an even bigger platform for their propaganda, a media strategy that dates back several decades, as Robert…
The Bad Math Behind Austerity
In recent years, the Republican obsession with slashing the federal budget even at a time of high unemployment rested on the intellectual foundation of a study purporting to prove that government debt strangled economic growth. But that foundation crumbled when…